I've just been chatting with Rui about a few of the problems I was having with black levels -- that's been sorted out. There was an option to "Output YUV data as basic YCbCr" which seems to put my black levels back to "normal."

However, another problem occured. Having transferred a program I recorded off Cable TV to DVCam and then transferred it across FireWire to my PC, I then proceeded to edit it with Premiere and then FrameServe via AviSynth 0.3 to TMPGEnc (2nd to latest version).

Because of the nature of the show (4 x 23 minute episodes), I figured VBR and AC3 audio @ 256 would be the best way to accomplish this. As a result, I set the VBR settings as follows:

8000 Maximum
6000 Average
4000 Minimum

When I transcode and then burn using ANY package, the video has a jerkiness to it. If I leave the VBR settings alone @ 8000 (the default), the video is fine. Likewise, if I set the video compression to CBR at 6.5, it's fine as well. I'd rather NOT go the route of CBR (even though it's faster), it's not necessarily the best option overall.

Can anybody offer me a suggestion as to what is causing this? I've looked at everything -- and, obviously, lower field is judged first and every other setting seems fine. It's just that when I try to encode with the 4000/6000/8000 setting, I end up with "jerky" video.